Lew Rockwell offers us in Fascism vs. Capitalism a provocative and insightful diagnosis of the political and economic ills of our time. The situation that we face, he says, is dire; but, fortunately, he does not leave us without remedy. To the contrary, the wisdom of Mises, Rothbard, and their colleagues in the Austrian School offers the means to rescue us, and the inspiring leadership of Ron Paul shows us the way to put their ideas into practice.

As the book’s title suggests, Rockwell finds “fascism” to be the key concept needed to analyze the modern American era. He is quick to deflect an objection:

“Fascism” has become a term of general derision and rebuke. It is tossed casually in the direction of anything a critic happens to dislike. … But fascism is a real concept, not a stick with which to beat opponents arbitrarily. The abuse of this important word undermines its true value as a term referring to a very real phenomenon, and one whose spirit lives on even now.

What, then, is fascism? To Rockwell, it is an aggressive nationalism and imperialism, together with domination of the economy by the state.

The state, for the fascist, is the instrument by which the people’s common destiny is realized, and in which the potential for greatness is to be found. Individual rights, and the individual himself, are strictly subordinate to the state’s great and glorious goals for the nation. In foreign affairs, the fascist attitude is reflected in a belligerent chauvinism, a contempt for other peoples, and a society-wide reverence for soldiers and the martial virtues.

To what extent does this conception of things apply to contemporary America? Rockwell demonstrates in detail that it applies all-too-well. Following one of his great predecessors, the Old Right stalwart John T. Flynn, he distinguishes eight “marks of fascism,” and for each one he illustrates its contemporary relevance. We have space to discuss only a few of these, but the reader is urged to read Rockwell’s complete discussion to grasp fully the strength of his analysis.

When the ordinary person thinks of fascism, he probably identifies it with the cult of the Leader, in the style of Hitler and Mussolini.

I [Rockwell] wouldn’t say that we truly have a dictatorship of one man in this country, but we do have a form of dictatorship of one sector of government over the entire country. The executive branch has spread so dramatically over the last century that it has become a joke to speak of checks and balances. What the kids learn in civics class has nothing to do with reality. … As for the leadership principle, there is no greater lie in American public life than the propaganda we hear every four years about how the new president/messiah is going to usher in the great dispensation of peace, equality, liberty, and global human happiness. The idea here is that the whole of society is really shaped and controlled by a single will — a point that requires a leap of faith so vast that you have to disregard everything you know about reality to believe it.

The increased power of the executive branch has been accompanied by a policy of militarism and war.

Ronald Reagan used to claim that his military buildup was essential to keeping the peace. The history of US foreign policy just since the 1980s has shown that this is wrong. We’ve had one war after another, wars waged by the United States against noncompliant countries, and the creation of even more client states and colonies.

US military strength has led not to peace but the opposite. It has caused most people in the world to regard the United States as a threat, and it has led to unconscionable wars on many countries. Wars of aggression were defined at Nuremberg as crimes against humanity.

At the heart of fascism lies state control of the economy. As Mises long ago pointed out, socialism can come about while the form of capitalism remains. In this type of socialism, the government dictates economic decisions and the ostensible business owners must obey its orders. It was precisely this pattern that Mises found in Nazism, and, unfortunately, it has become increasingly prevalent in America today.

The reality of bureaucratic administration has been with us at least since the New Deal, which was modeled on the planning bureaucracy that lived in World War I. The planned economy — whether in Mussolini’s time or ours — requires bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the heart, lungs, and veins of the planning state. And yet to regulate an economy as thoroughly as this one is today is to kill prosperity with a billion tiny cuts.

Those devoted to freedom will of course reject fascism, with its blind power worship and dangerous economics, but what if one finds the fascist vision appealing? Can it maintain itself in power for the indefinite future? Rockwell does not think so; we have entered the period of “late fascism,” and the appeal of the “cult of the colossal” has passed from the scene.

The fascist style emphasized inspiration, magnificence, industrial progress, grandeur, all headed by a valiant leader making smart decisions about all things. This style of American rule lasted from the New Deal through the end of the Cold War. … Fascism, like socialism, cannot achieve its aims. So there is a way in which it makes sense to speak of a stage of history: We are in the stage of late fascism. The grandeur is gone, and all we are left with is a gun pointed at our heads. The system was created to be great, but it is reduced in our time to being crude. Valor is now violence. Majesty is now malice.

What, then, is the way forward? Rockwell looks to the great Austrians for an answer. By contrast with intellectuals who pander to the powerful, the Austrians

must go against the grain. They must say the things that others do not want to hear. They must be willing to be unpopular, socially and politically. I’m thinking here of people like Benjamin Anderson, Garet Garrett, Henry Hazlitt, and, on the Continent, L. Albert Hahn, F.A. Hayek, and, above all, Ludwig von Mises. They gave up career and fame to stick with the truth and say what had to be said.

Rockwell finds particular inspiration in the work of Murray Rothbard.

We all do well to emulate this master when we go about our work. When Rothbard would take on a subject, his very first stop was not to sit in an easy chair and think off the top of his head; instead, he went to the literature and sought to master it. He read everything he could from all points of view. He sought to become as much an expert in the topic as the other experts in the field. … There is another respect in which we can all emulate Murray. He was fearless in speaking the truth. He never let fear of colleagues, fear of the profession, fear of editors or political cultures, stand in the way of his desire to say what was true. This is why he turned to the Austrian tradition even though most economists at the time considered it a dead paradigm. This is why he embraced liberty, and worked to shore up its theoretical and practice rationale at a time when the rest of the academic world was going the other way.

How are the ideas of Mises and Rothbard to be put into practice? How can we enlist a wide public in the cause of liberty? Rockwell points to the career of Ron Paul. He

knew that the philosophy of liberty, when explained persuasively and with conviction, had a universal appeal. Every group he spoke to heard a slightly different presentation of that message, as Ron showed how their particular concerns were addressed most effectively by a policy of freedom.

Everyone interested in the future of liberty needs to read Fascism vs. Capitalism.

President John Adams once said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” -October 11, 1798.

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

The revisionist historians in the public education system have “covered up” God for decades. Recent generations do not know that America was once a nation of moral people. Now, over half the people in America are not well informed and are willing to believe the liberal fascist propaganda from the left.

Both the Democrats and Republicans are notorious for wanting to stay in power. Both have made keeping the morally corrupt two party system a priority. The main stream media has colluded with both parties to preserve the two party system and exclude any and all other parties from the political process. Voters get their news and information from TV. They have been very successful.

In the future, after it becomes obvious that their plan failed, these “useful idiots” will still blame Bush.

Such people are the product of America’s decaying society whose reality has been warped by the entertainment and news media combined with the leftist public education system.

The alienation of God in society began in the classroom. Moral decay followed. Hollywood portrays the sane as the insane. The abnormal and perverted as normal. Is it any wonder America is in trouble?

“Freedom of the press” means the media will be free to report what it wants you to know. ABC, CBS, NBC , MSNBC, CNN are similar to the former Soviet Union’s “Pravda”.

When Alexander Solzhenitsyn came to America he warned the US in the 70′s:

“Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil”(speech to Harvard 1978).

The American press laughed at him and turned a deaf ear at his observations of America’s immorality. Solzhenitsyn also warned long ago of today’s socialism:

“A number of such critics turn to socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.”

The danger is already here and the situation gets worse with every passing day. Obama is trying to put duct tape on a sinking ship. But only when the majority of Americans return to the morals and ethics of our forefathers and the founders of this once great nation, will the situation improve.

“Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.” -William Penn (American hero of Liberty and religious freedom).

” We’ve staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments with all of our heart.” - James Madison, 1778, to the General Assembly of the State of Virginia.

American society began it’s moral nose dive almost five decades. Call it Marxism, Socialism, Statism or Communism. It’s all a form of liberal fascism, “political correctness”, the cancer of self responsibility and freedom that has always been spread by progressives.

During the First World War, Woodrow Wilson and the progressive movement used war as a means to rally society to the collective good of the nation. George Perkins, a financier of progressive causes at the time, boasted that the First World War “is striking down individualism and building up collectivism.” Michael McGerr, in his book A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, cited one progressive who championed the war claiming, “Laissez-faire is dead. Long live social control.”

Jonah Goldberg, in his well regarded book Liberal Fascism, noted that “[m]ore dissidents were arrested or jailed in a few years under Wilson than under Mussolini during the entire 1920s.” Americans often ignore our history and often the media forgets history when it choses to report or not report something.

In May of 1918, several hundred publications were denied access to the postal service. As Goldberg documented in Liberal Fascism, “In Wisconsin a state official got two and a half years for criticizing a Red Cross fund-raising drive. A Hollywood producer received a ten-year stint in jail for making a film that depicted British troops committing atrocities during the American Revolution. One man was brought to trial for explaining in his own home why he didn’t want to buy Liberty Bonds.”

This was the state acting on its own. Consider though the American Protective League, officially approved by then Attorney General Thomas Gregory, and composed of private citizens acting as a “secret” organization. The organization harassed individuals and businesses, threatening and bullying any who stood in the way of the goals of the state. They spied on their neighbors, read their mail, and acted in ways similar to the variously colored shirted organizations in Europe and former European colonies. In fact, even Woodrow Wilson had misgivings about them writing Attorney General Gregory, “It would be dangerous to have such an organization operating in the United States, and I wonder if there is any way in which we could stop it?” Wilson did not stop it.

These were not right wingers. The APL and similar groups may have targeted unions, but did so on the belief that unions were disrupting activities of the progressive state, e.g. undermining Wilson’s war effort.

The re-emerged progressive movement, springing to action to “agitate” (their word choice) for President Obama’s agenda is troubling. There is a pattern of behavior within the modern progressive movement against dissent echoing the progressive movement during Woodrow Wilson’s tenure. Then, progressives engaged in fascist strategy and tactics to silence opposition to Wilson’s advance of the state over the individual. Many on the left then hailed Benito Mussolini as a hero and champion of progress in the way many on the modern left hail Hugo Chavez as the same. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, progressive activists are engaging in a similar pattern of intimidation and violence that they perversely think will help President Obama.

Progressives control the federal government, including the Presidency and the Senate. Yet liberals are still angry. See MSNBC and Twitter for details. Joe Scarborough recently wondered why the left is still angry? After all they won. The answer is simple: Progressives are LIBERAL FASCISTS. The progressive politicians try to put a smiley face on their fascism to win over useful idiots. But the progressive base will always be angry.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. -Benjamin Franklin

American progressivism, from which today’s liberalism descended, was a kind of Christian fascism (many called it “Christian socialism”). This is a difficult concept for modern liberals to grasp because they are used to thinking of the progressives as the people who cleaned up the food supply, pushed through the eight hour workday, and ended child labor. But liberals often forget that the progressives were imperialists, at home and abroad. They were the authors of Prohibition, the Palmer Raids, eugenics, loyalty oaths, and, in its modern incarnation, what many call “state capitalism.” —Jonah Goldberg

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.”

The Confederate flag is about to come down on the grounds of South Carolina’s state capitol. The descent is tied, irrationally, to an incident that attributes the murderous actions of a sole self-avowed white supremacist, Dylan Roof, to a way of life in the South.

There was no evidence of a white-black divide in mourning the deaths of those nine black churchgoers in Charleston,South Carolina. There is zero Tea Party,conservative, libertarian or GOP support for Dylan Roof.

But, to those advancing a Progressive Political agenda, the Confederate battle flag became a convenient scapegoat and target for political propaganda concerning “racism” in America.

The Southern Cross, a Confederate battle flag does not offend me as much as the reasons advocates have given for why we must take it down right now. They are advancing the unsupportable notion that today’s South is the South of fifty plus years ago.

These contentions are lies. Neither the South nor America stands up for racist murders or lynchings in 2015. Today, Confederate flags are a symbol of Southern Heritage, respect for hundreds of thousands of ancestors who perished in the War of Northern Aggression and 10th Amendment states rights“ outlined in the Constitution, not slavery or segregation.

I take strong exception and offense at President Obama’s declaration — and the NAACP’s insinuation — that racism is in our DNA as a nation. Obama was elected twice by a white majority.

Racism is confined to the fringes. These haters have other symbols to carry and wave besides the Confederate flag. Would we remove the American flag from our eyes’ view if a lone racist murderer were to wrap himself in it? Louis Farrakhan says the American flag itself is a symbol of American racism, and a commitment to white supremacy.

Yes, some racists have hijacked the Confederate Battle Flag but some have also adopted the American Flag and Bible to advance their hatred. Black civil rights advocates, professional race baiters, and Progressives, with the help of the left wing media, are dishonoring patriotic African American ancestors who marched, fought and died to protect their homeland, from what they saw as unconstitutional Northern aggression.

In 1861, when they perceived their rights to be threatened, when those who would alter the nature of the government of their fathers were placed in charge, when threatened with change they could not accept, the mighty men of valor began to gather. A band of brothers, native to the Southern soil, they pledged themselves to a cause: the cause of defending family, fireside, and faith. Between the desolation of war and their homes they interposed their bodies and they chose me for their symbol.

In 1861, when they perceived their rights to be threatened, when those who would alter the nature of the government of their fathers were placed in charge, when threatened with change they could not accept, the mighty men of valor began to gather. A band of brothers, native to the Southern soil, they pledged themselves to a cause: the cause of defending family, fireside, and faith. Between the desolation of war and their homes they interposed their bodies and they chose me for their symbol.

I Am Their Flag.

The Confederate Congress specified that black soldiers were to receive the same pay as the white soldiers. The Union army’s black soldiers were paid less than the white soldiers. A black soldier in the Union army would have been paid $10 a month with a $3 clothing fee taken out, leaving the soldier with $7 a month. White soldiers were paid $13 a month and were not forced to pay a clothing allowance, which is almost twice as much as the black soldiers. By contrast the Confederate army paid their privates of both races $11/month until 1864